Tom Fitzmorris

Tom Fitzmorris has a one-track mind. He's written and broadcast more about New Orleans food than any other journalist: weekly restaurant reviews since 1972, a daily radio show about food since 1975, seventeen restaurant guidebooks, four cookbooks, and hundreds of articles about eating in New Orleans.

He was born there on Mardi Gras in 1951, and had never left town for more than three weeks at a time until Hurricane Katrina. That storm moved him to write his most comprehensive cookbook, Tom Fitzmorris' New Orleans Food, while he was still in evacuation after the storm. A national publisher picked it up, and after one year it is already in its fourth printing. Tom donates fifty percent of the royalties from the book to the recovery efforts of Habitat For Humanity in New Orleans.

Tom is best known, though, for his unique daily radio gig, The Food Show. For three hours a day, six days a week, avid diners and cooks call Tom on the air and compare notes about restaurants, cooking, wine, and food. You can call Tom for New Orleans dining info from wherever you are at 504-260-9762 between 4 and 7 p.m. Central Time. The show is aired on 1350 AM

In 1977, Tom began publishing The New Orleans MENU, a newsletter of dining and cooking. It evolved over the years into a web-based daily newsletter, available at nomenu.com. It includes restaurant reviews, top-ten lists, recipes, a daily food almanac, and other features.

In 1986, Tom achieved the distinction of Certified Culinary Professional from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, a national association of food writers and cooking instructors. He is one of only two CCPs in the state of Louisiana.

In addition to his food writing, Tom was the editor of the weekly newspaper Figaro and the monthly New Orleans Magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, before he launched his own publication. He has written for national magazines on subjects as diverse as real estate, railroading, astronomy, and home reconstruction.

He doesn't just write about cooking. He does a lot of it in the own kitchen. Several times a year he offers his services as a chef to bidders at charity auctions. Typically, these dinners for eight bring in donations deep into four figures.

Tom is married to a former radio talk show host, Mary Ann Connell Fitzmorris. They have a son, Jude, and a daughter, Mary Leigh. They live in the countryside north of New Orleans. Some terrific, meaty bolete mushrooms grow there.